Wednesday, August 24, 2011

2011 Streak Day 209/365 (July 28): Matha

This was the first day of the holiday and a time to begin as I meant to continue - so up at 6:30, a quick drink of water and out!

I have no idea how I can do this so easily here but find it almost impossible at home. Perhaps it is just necessity, as usually, in this part of France, in summer, the days are very hot and far too sapping for running. However at sunrise, when there is a sky becoming more intensely blue, with the promise of later warmth, it is perfect.

The great thing about this time of day is the sense of hopefulness, the freshness of a new beginning,which is more than a metaphor - you feel it.

Perhaps trying to rediscover a sense of the excitement of each new day is something I should work on at home. But what the hell! Now is not the time to wibble on about my failings - that can wait. Home is a million miles away. I am here now, in the middle of the empty French countryside, looking at the rolling landscape, with not another person in sight, breathing deeply of air carrying far fewer car fumes. It feels good.

I would lie if I said the run was pure pleasure - it was not. I felt heavy and for the most part I slogged along the country roads but I could look up and enjoy the view and know, that no matter how rubbish I might be, it really is brilliant running country.

The photo is of a tiny island at the road junction in the centre of the nearby, small town of Matha (population about 2,000 people). It is not the water feature I find interesting but rather the framing tree - the blossom is of a colour that looks particularly fine against pale, off-white limestone rendering, which is the predominant finish of buildings in these parts.

No comments:

My Other Blog

My project for 2014 is to try to record small, fleeting moments of pleasure. The sort of thing that makes you inwardly smile but is then quickly forgotten. I want to prove that my default setting is not really miserablist.

Search This Blog

Follow by Email

About This Blog

When I started in 2005 the aim was to explore my fascination with running and the way something so simple and repetitious could be so satisfying. How can something with real purpose enhance your own sense of purpose? How can basic exercise make you feel more connected?

Taking my inspiration from the famous saying of George Sheehan that runners are an experiment of one, I have tried to record my experiences to help me make sense of what I am doing and hope that others might recognise something of themselves in my struggles

Over time the subject matter has stretched to include cycling and walking, so sometimes it is more about being out and about around Hemel Hempstead (my home town) than the satisfactions of running. I am also started to cover issues surrounding exercise and public health. This seems quite a natural extension: if I am writing about how exercise enhances my own life, I also want to find out why that simple insight is not more widely shared.

About Me

I have no idea why I hide behind this alias but it is a Townes Van Zandt song and that will have to be reason enough.
Other than that I am a middle-aged (verging on the ancient), non-competitive (ie slow) runner.
There is nothing special about what i do. I just write about it